Now I feel…filthy

Earlier this week, I argued that some people didn’t understand creation-speak — they were interpreting a Ken Ham statement as an admission that he had no evidence. This was not correct, because Ken Ham is so dishonest or deluded that he’d never admit that, ever.

Now Ham has acknowledged my ‘assistance’.

Interestingly, even one of our most vocal opponents—who is an atheist—pointed out the misrepresentations made about this radio program. Dr. PZ Myers of Minnesota, who does not like me at all and hates God, has recognized that many of his fellow secularists have misquoted me and have taken my comments out of context. He wrote on his blog a few days ago that secular bloggers have completely misread my radio statements: “What he [i.e., me] actually said is familiar creationist dogma, and comes nowhere near their interpretation. . . . It doesn’t say what they think it says. Notice the ‘solely’; creationists will claim that they are using their reason, even when they aren’t.” Later in his blog, Myers takes a shot at me, but in this rare instance, PZ’s blog has come to my defense! (I am reluctant to link to PZ’s blog because of some vile content and profanity, but some people will want to check out the “defense” for themselves at freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula.)

Yuck. I need a shower. That’s also the most he’s ever acknowledged my existence.

By the way, I don’t hate gods — they don’t exist. I really despise the buffoons who lie about gods to fleece their flocks, though.

It’s good to be annoying the Christians again

So I wrote this short essay for the Washington Post, and it’s been interesting reaching a whole different audience. It’s not an audience that is increasing my esteem for the human race, unfortunately, but it’s been…different. My twitter stream has been flooded by irate Christians, which is fun, but most of their responses are rather familiar.

Here’s one common flavor: patronizing Christian sympathy.

Berth2020 @berth2020
@washingtonpost @pzmyers you need to work on being kind to others. . I’m sorry you’ve been hurt.

I haven’t been hurt, and I don’t consider wallowing in lies as you do to be “kind”.

Then there’s the usual stereotyping of atheists as amoral monsters.

romesh sharma1949 @romesh1949
@washingtonpost @pzmyers Atheist,a man who is answerable to None, free from all bonds , will behave like an animal 99.99% or saint 00.01%

Right, Mr Made-Up-Statistics. So the prisons must be like 99.99% atheist?

Then, of course, there are the excuses.

Christopher Dull @PaEvengelist
@jeremydavidpare @DavisRBr @washingtonpost @pzmyers One reason for unanswered prayer is God does not here the prayers of unrepentant sinners

Interesting. So if you pray, and you don’t get what you want, you must be one of those unrepentant sinners? What are the other reasons?

But the most common complaint, the one that seems to be winning the votes right now, surprises me a bit.

Jeremy @jeremydavidpare
@pzmyers almost nothing you said in that article even remotely resembles anything Christian’s believe or practice… #misinformedatheist

This particular guy sent out a dozen tweets calling for his buddies to refute me; another fellow repeatedly demanded that the Washington Post allow him equal time to rebut my inaccuracies. I haven’t told the truth about Christianity!

What? Let me remind you of what my essay was about: I talked about the baggage we atheists have freed ourselves from, and I gave very general examples, stuff that is widely true of most of the diverse Christian sects in this country. Here’s a shorter version of what I mentioned.

1. No church and no sermons.

The practice of Christianity in this country certainly does involve church attendance, and it’s customary in most faiths (with exceptions, like the Quakers) to have a priest lecture you on proper behavior and beliefs at these events.

2. No heaven or hell, no bribes or threats.

Again, most Christian sects have notions of reward and punishment in an afterlife.

3. No prayers.

Every version of Christianity I’ve experienced is prayer-soaked — a combination of entreaties and worship of an invisible deity. How can anyone deny this?

4. No guilt about defying a deity.

A common Christian command is to OBEY god, one and only one god. You will be punished if you disobey. Of course there’s a burden of guilt for failure to do as the priest tells you to do!

5. No power from above, no hierarchies.

With rare exceptions (again, Quakers), most Christian sects lay out a very specific hierarchy of power and responsibilities — with Catholicism the most obvious, with power from God to Pope to Cardinals to Bishops to Priests to the laity.

6. No false consolation at death.

Another really common feature of Christianity: just go to a funeral. Look at the political cartoons after a famous person dies. “They’re in a better place,” everyone says. Wrong, say I, they’re dead and lost to us forever, and mourning is the right and proper response.

Nothing I said was in the slightest bit inaccurate; these are general properties of the practice of religion in this country. So what could they possibly argue that I was wrong about?

I have a guess. They’re going to deliver some pious hokum about the True Meaning of Faith™, which will be some pablum about redemption by the torture/execution of a fanatical Jewish preacher in the first century CE, and how the important part of Christianity is love and fellowship and spreading the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the story of our immortal, eternal god who died and bounced back a day and a half later, since he was able to perform a Resurrection spell (but unfortunately, was unable to Cure Light Wounds so he had to walk around with holes in his hands).

Which means I forgot to include an important piece of baggage we atheists don’t have to haul around.

7. We don’t have to pretend to believe in obvious bullshit.

I’ve never been to San Diego’s Creationist “Museum”

But at least now I have a photo tour. It’s predictable, and says pretty much the same stuff as the one in Kentucky, or the one in Missouri, or the one in Washington state…they really don’t have any evidence or any story that’s worth sharing in a great big building.

Go read the first page of the Bible. You’ll have the total shebang right there, including the totality of what they’re calling evidence.

Although I do think this one photo is a nice summary of the entirety of bogus creationist logic.

thatsit

Sanal Edamaruku writes about his friend, Narendra Dabholkar

It’s sad reading. Dabholkar was clearly a good man.

Dabholkar was hated by fundamentalists. But, being the peaceful, open-hearted and kind man he was, he was adored and loved by the people. Over the years, his popularity in Maharashtra grew and grew – together with public understanding of the importance of the rationalist fight.

Stories like this make me wonder. We can praise the dead and we can talk about the good he had done, but we don’t hear the conversations of the cowards who shot him in the back, and their defenders. I’d like to see what they have to say, because I’m confident that their words would be even more persuasive of the rightness of Dabholkar’s cause.

Manitobans are getting busy

Our neighbors to the North are getting out and doing stuff throughout September. They’re launching the You Are Not Alone! campaign, and doing this fancy outreach stuff.

The Humanists, Atheists & Agnostics of Manitoba (HAAM) are having so many good events coming up that we’ve decided to call it the “You Are Not Alone” campaign. It’s “Super Secular September” in Manitoba.

In brief:

– This weekend our booth will be out at the Morden Corn & Apple festival (very bible-belt area of Manitoba) doing outreach.
– Winnipeg transit will run our external bus ads starting September 2.
– Manyfest, another festival in Winnipeg on September 7/8. Outreach again.
– We’re sponsoring a talk on behalf of “Dying with Dignity Canada” on September 10th
– Fourth annual Skepticamp on September 14
– Our regular September meeting on September 21

I imagine they’ll get a few double-takes at the Morden Corn & Apple Festival, which is exactly why atheists ought to do more of that sort of thing.

Ray Comfort sinks to new depths of pathos

So Ray cobbled together some heavily edited footage of people answering questions he asked, called it a “movie”, and is promoting it on the internet. I’ve seen it; it’s a terrible piece of dreck, and yeah, he lies. I’ve been over this a few times before, but I gave him evidence for evolution, and he just cut it right out of the footage since it didn’t fit his claims.

Now he’s got a new strategy for promoting it: he’s taunting Richard Dawkins to “Come out of Hiding”. It’s bizarre. Dawkins wasn’t in the “movie”, he had nothing to do with the “movie”, and Comfort is just trying desperately to attach a big name to his lazy piece of crap. You know, I have some home movies of my kids; I think I’ll try to peddle them as quality entertainment on the internet by telling Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie to quit hiding from the superiority of my family and give me a testimonial.

A number of people have demanded that Comfort release the unedited raw footage so we can see how dishonestly he mangled people’s words. He’s refused. Or rather, he’s now attached conditions: he wants people to pay him for the full video recordings.

American Atheists Inc., have demanded that unedited footage be released, which they believe will show a USC professor giving scientific evidence for evolution. Comfort says that the USC professor didn’t give any, but that he is willing to release the interview if Dawkins pays the same amount he required for a debate with Comfort (payable to the Salvation Army). “I offered him $20,000 to debate me, and he said he would, if I gave his foundation $100,000. He knew that I wouldn’t go that high, so we produced the movie instead.”

Greedy lowlife. Recall that Richard Dawkins produced a documentary, The Root of All Evil?, in which he interviewed various religious figures, which of course had to be edited for brevity. Afterwards he released the full footage of the interviews, freely, so that there could be no argument that he’d edited them dishonestly.

Ray Comfort can make no such claim.

By the way, the article about taunting Dawkins is a disgraceful bit of creationist propaganda, but it’s posted on CNN…as something called an “iReport”, which has a disclaimer that it is not vetted by CNN. What does it take to get on there? Given that apparent creationists get a slot, the bar to entry must be really low.

Narendra Dabholkar assassinated in India

Dabholkar was a leader of the rationalist movement in India, who had been fighting for anti-superstition and anti-black magic bills. He was gunned down by cowards on motorcycles this morning — it was an assassination, plain and simple.

I’m passing along a brief summary I received this morning.

With deep distress and regret I have to report to you the assassination this morning of one of India’s most important Rationalist and Humanist leaders, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, founder of the Maharashtra Andha Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti or Maharashtra Forum for Elimination of Superstition. News is trickling in.

Inspired by the work of the great rationalist Basava Premanand, Dr. Dabholkar, a medical doctor, plunged into anti-superstition work in 1983 and built a concrete movement in his home state of Maharashtra. He was briefly Vice President of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, a Member Organisation of IHEU.

A person of great charm and commitment to the cause,he refused to spread his activism outside Maharashtra because he was keen on first developing a branch of his organisation in each village of Maharashtra.

Organisational work of this kind made the movement a force to reckon with in Maharashtra state where he was spearheading the movement for a Bill against Witchcraft earlier called the Anti-Superstition Bill. The earlier Bill was passed in one house of the legislature but did not get through the second. His untiring efforts were successful, and the new Bill garnered the support of all the political parties except that of the Shiv Sena and the BJP. The ruling Congress party, however, did not take it up on the Business Agenda of the Legislature – many suspect that this was because of the upset it would cause to the orthodox. When passed, it would be a most potent weapon in the fight against superstitions which sap the life blood of Indian society.

Babu Gogineni